20 Years Post the Fall of Babel: I grew up with "duck-and-cover" and Dr. Strangelove scenarios running through my young head. "The Day After" wasn't just a Sci-Fi movie based on a nuclear attack in Kansas. It was a very real, thought out M.A.D. scenario that still exists today. Now, those former enemies are our only means of getting astronauts to the International Space Station, and that ability is threatened by their technical failures and our retirement of the Space Shuttle Program.
The original description of the Drake Equation, a calculation for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was that the species survive long enough to communicate, and everyone then knew what "survival" meant.
Hither this cauldron, came Star Trek, and Gene Roddenberry with enough hutspah to put the first interracial (and as I've pointed out - interspecies) kisses on television, "Plato's Stepchildren" was summarily banned in some southern markets.
And, let's not forget: "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield" where two alien species annihilated each other for which side the other was black (or white) on. The irony: they were mirror images of the other, but that did not matter.
We could survive our madmen, our Hitler, our Khan Noonien Singh, and ride triumphantly into a tomorrow of our own making.
Our myths, ancient or modern, give us a reason to go on, press forward, hope for a future that is better than the present.
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